Although native to eastern Asia, crape myrtles are indispensable in the Southern landscape. Its vibrantly colored flowers in shades of pink, purple, red and white from May to September virtually ...

DEAR NEIL: I have a crape myrtle plant that must have been killed back to the ground before I bought the house. There are a dozen or more trunks, and I’d like to get it back to being a tree. How do I ...

Crepe myrtles, Lagerstroemia indica, vary in size from dwarf shrubs to multi-trunked and single-trunk trees growing to 30 feet tall. Most varieties produce beautiful blooms starting in spring or ...

Q: Why are the trunks of my crape myrtles turning black? They look rather unsightly. Mine aren't the only ones doing this -- many in our neighborhood look the same. Is it a disease? Is it going to ...

Too often, crape myrtles are cut back to bare trunks because this abuse will yield more flowers. This type of severe pruning results in a shorter bloom time, delayed flowering, weaker branching and ...

Over the past couple of weeks, fellow gardeners have asked that I explain how to prune crepe myrtles, as I often complain (to anyone that will listen) about neighbors following neighbors' poor pruning ...

Years of improper pruning have taken their toll on this crape myrtle tree. (Alan Windham, University of Tennessee) QUESTION: While visiting a local mall, I noticed the crape myrtles had all been cut ...

My daughter has several crape myrtles in her yard. Some of them have started to lose the bark on their trunks, and there is an orange residue where the bark has fallen off. Is this something to be ...

Somehow, the belief that crape myrtles should be brutally pruned by cutting off their tops persists, even though it's inaccurate. Crape murder is a term that has been coined to describe this severe ...

Crape murder is happening all over town. It doesn’t matter how horticulturists talk about proper pruning techniques, each year more and more trees are cut back to stubs. Standard crape myrtles have ...